in pug dungeons; which do you think brings more to the table?
im currently running auramancer with might stacking (standard 0/10/0/30/30, 60% boon duration with knights/zerker armour, soldier daggers(battle+bloodlust) and (2/5) celestial trinkets), but the lightning hammer (and staff/S+X) really appeals to me
i dont really have the resources to deck him out in an alternate set of gear atm, so wanted an opinion before i invest more time/gold/transtones into it
Lightning hammer won’t get near it’s damage potential unless you re-stat and at least partially re-gear. It’s damage comes from maximizing crit-damage and % damage add traits. Boon duration runes and 30 arcane takes several hundred off your power and a good chunk from precision and crit damage.
If you want to get a feel for it just re-trait to something like the lightning hammer dps build floating around this forum, keeping your same armors and weapons. It won’t be quite as hard hitting, but still benefits from the aoe blind and blast spam.
I like staff and scepter better for most PvE than D/D. Staff works good with auramancer build, better than D/D even since the shocking aura nerfs/fixes. Scepter/X only has one aura, so really kinda a waste of traits for those weapon sets, when using a scepter, just swap aura traits to something that adds damage or other useful majors.
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
I honestly don’t think Thor is worth it in pugs. The build relies on others to buff you so that your multipliers shine, something you will not get in pugs.
Lightning hammer won’t get near it’s damage potential unless you re-stat and at least partially re-gear. It’s damage comes from maximizing crit-damage and % damage add traits. Boon duration runes and 30 arcane takes several hundred off your power and a good chunk from precision and crit damage.
i didnt mean have lightning hammer with my current set up; but since ele is my next char in line for asc gear i want to make sure i get it right (also i dont want to keep wasting transmutation stones)
If you want to get a feel for it just re-trait to something like the lightning hammer dps build floating around this forum, keeping your same armors and weapons. It won’t be quite as hard hitting, but still benefits from the aoe blind and blast spam.
again; i dont plan on keeping my current armour if i do switch to a hammer build
I like staff and scepter better for most PvE than D/D. Staff works good with auramancer build, better than D/D even since the shocking aura nerfs/fixes. Scepter/X only has one aura, so really kinda a waste of traits for those weapon sets, when using a scepter, just swap aura traits to something that adds damage or other useful majors.
im aware of the weapons (i have 376hrs on my ele, 1700 hrs total… wow thats… excessive), im more interested in how people approach them in dungeons
I honestly don’t think Thor is worth it in pugs. The build relies on others to buff you so that your multipliers shine, something you will not get in pugs.
thats what i was worried about; but then i realised that vulnerabiltity is really common (even if its only a couple of stacks), whilst guardian ele ranger (cond damage though "/) and engi (nader) can all keep pretty decent burn uptime (i could never give up vigor on crit; so it only needs burning and vuln for multipliers – if i guessed the traits wrong; was too lazy to check)
… but then my current ele puts out perm 9-12 stacks of aoe might, perm fury for myself (decent uptime for team) and nice group healing/cleansing ability
(i realised i didnt attatch my current eles pic; that one on the first post is what im planning on it looking like finally; but i dont want to waste transmutation stones -the gear is still a bit messed up; crit damage not optimised; need to get celestial trinkets and was planning on swapping out my soldier daggers for berserker ones)
I honestly don’t think Thor is worth it in pugs. The build relies on others to buff you so that your multipliers shine, something you will not get in pugs.
thats what i was worried about; but then i realised that vulnerabiltity is really common (even if its only a couple of stacks), whilst guardian ele ranger (cond damage though "/) and engi (nader) can all keep pretty decent burn uptime (i could never give up vigor on crit; so it only needs burning and vuln for multipliers – if i guessed the traits wrong; was too lazy to check)
… but then my current ele puts out perm 9-12 stacks of aoe might, perm fury for myself (decent uptime for team) and nice group healing/cleansing ability
(i realised i didnt attatch my current eles pic; that one on the first post is what im planning on it looking like finally; but i dont want to waste transmutation stones -the gear is still a bit messed up; crit damage not optimised; need to get celestial trinkets and was planning on swapping out my soldier daggers for berserker ones)
Most pugs will only appreciate an ele that is popping off fields left and right and wiping conditions for them. It doesn’t make sense to pug putting yourself at risk using a full dps hammer build because they don’t even see your dps numbers anyway but they will remember how many times they had to revive you. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I had more opportunities to use it but good parties are hard to come by.
In my experience its best to just d/d 0/10/0/30/30 in full berserkers switching to staff if you will be a liability in melee. If the party is so bad that I can’t get by on this its not worth being in the party.
I roll hammer into 90% of my pugs, and people notice. Any time they see you solo on a mob just wrecking, or notice they’re never getting hit because of blinds, or notice how many of their fields you’re blasting. And you’re numbers are still good without vuln/burn. You can always use glyph of power to mitigate it some. This build will also make you better at the game. Mele’ing successfully as a zerker ele is challenging and fun. The moment the warrior realizes you’re wrecking his damage and he rage quits, perfection in this life.
You can go 25/10/0/25/10 for the LH build and pick up vigor on crit from arcana to really help survive in mele. This also leaves you with a lot of good on the fly retrait options for fights that are better ranged (for example, last fight of MF) with options to pick up cleanse on swap, reduce fire cool down, quick glyphs (quick heal!), buff on swap, and so on.
For LH traits are
Ember’s Might, Conjurer
Bolt to the heart
Piercing Shards, +damage if hp > 90%
vigor on crit
